fcheblog  -

2011-12-19 20:52 | fche blog seriously I have a better idea

SmileTrain, whoever they are, made me this offer I can’t possibly refuse.

Mr. Eigler, make one gift and we’ll never ask for another donation again.

It was tempting. It was perhaps too good to be true. Might the invasion of donation solicitations finally abate, if I only paid?

Maybe. But maybe I’m the kind of fellow who doesn’t mind shredding the occasional postal kindling to feed the backyard bonfire. Maybe I get a tiny grin each time some agency spends their hard-earned (?) cash on mailing me some “Addressed Admail”, getting nothing in return. Except the kind of publicity in this blog post. Yes, maybe that’s just the kind of guy I am. Sorry about that.

2011-12-04 22:18 | fche blog seriously silent startup

Parents! Caregivers! Older siblings with credit cards! Does someone in the family whine just too damn much? Does the moaning, complaining, shrieking grate away at your sanity? Now comes to you a service of such obvious usefulness, it’s a miracle it hasn’t been invented before.

It’s the wahmbulance!

What is it? We are a mobile service to give you a reprieve from the noise, that horrible noise, that noise that makes you think of inconceivably wrong ways of permanently solving the problem. You call us – our number is nine wahn wahn wahn wahn.

Once our twenty-four hour operations centre receives your call, and your credit card number, we spring into action. Our specially trained pawahmedics rush to your location with one of our patent-protected emergency silence vehicle. Upon arrival, we take into custody the noisemaker and safely store him or her in the secure silent storage compartment of our vehicles.

Is it safe & effective? Our world class engineers designed the best quality sound suppression and rubber padding enclosure for our vans. All six walls are covered with six inches of translucent rubber tiles that permit necessary ventilation and light, but are impervious to damage and to sound in the audible frequencies. A screaming five-year-old may emit 120 dBA, but through the walls it’s not even a whimper. Study after study has shown that the fastest legal (non-wounding) means of teaching a noisemaker to shut the heck up is to place him or her into a place where no one else is bothered.

Is it legal? Certainly. While a noisemaker is being protected from the consequences of his or her shrieks, the private-option wahmbulance van stays parked on your driveway, with you holding the ignition & lock keys. The noisemaker cannot be removed from this temporary extension to your home. Or if you’re on a tight budget, you may opt for our cheaper semi-private option, where a multi-enclosure bus may roam to collect multiple noisemakers from a neighbourhood. In this case, a live muted video feed lets you monitor your own noisemaker from the comfort of your local internet video receiver. Since no medical care is provided for the individuals in temporary custody, no particular licensing agency is involved.

After a few minutes or hours or days, when you’re ready to let the noisemaker rejoin your social cohesion unit, just dial nine whan whan whan whan whan. Our storage/education tank works so well, we hardly ever to serve the same person twice.

Call now.
Franchise opportunities available.

2011-11-08 07:00 | fche blog seriously journalistic code of conduct

Yeah, so Obama can’t stand Netanyahu, not a big surprise to anyone who’s been watching. But this part of the news report is shocking:

The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that journalists present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the embarrassing comments. A Reuters reporter was among the journalists present and can confirm the veracity of the comments.
A member of the media confirmed Monday that “there were discussions between journalists and they agreed not to publish the comments due to the sensitivity of the issue.”
He added that while it was annoying to have to refrain from publishing the information, the journalists are subject to precise rules of conduct.

These reporters have so prostituted themselves in the name of access that they agree to pass only non-sensitive non-embarrassing information! What self-respecting news consumer would want to pay for (or even read) the effluent that comes from outfits that admit to doing this?

2011-10-26 12:44 | fche blog seriously sheltered lives

There are many noteworthy bits of art. There are many silly ones. There are not a few that attempt to be so avant-garde that they are unintentionally pathetic.

2011-10-13 11:50 | fche blog seriously keysigning dance party

One can’t help but imagine that a videographer could assemble an entertaining clip from this forthcoming event

6. After everyone has read his key ID information, have all attendees form a line.
7. The first person walks down the line having every person check his ID. The second person follows immediately behind the first person and so on.
8. If you are satisfied that the person is who they say they are, and that the key on the printout is theirs, you place another check-mark next to their key on your printout.
9. Once the first person cycles back around to the front of the line he has checked all the other IDs and his ID has been checked by all others

All you need is a fiddle and a caller and you get a geek square dance. Note by the way how the PGP web of trust concept is itself so untrusted at this event. Every attendee is expected to verify every other attendee’s paper ID. They don’t trust each other to validate the IDs. The web of real trust is just one hop deep.

2011-10-09 14:07 | fche blog seriously individuals

Compare:
Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Occupy Atlanta

2011-07-04 09:51 | fche blog seriously ad hater hominem

Online debates have encouraged the development of new and exciting methods of argument. The one we
shall discuss today is a clever dodge. It is the use of the pejorative class-designator “hater”.

It is best used preemptively:

Blah blah blah. But haters will hate. They’ll disagree with anything new (or different, or whatever). Blah blah blah blah.

but it is no less effective as a riposte:

Oh yeah? You’re just a hater!

It’s a great little ploy. One who disagrees must do so because of some inherent character flaw that renders them unworthy of engagement. We used to call this form of argument the “ad hominem fallacy”, but “hater error” has a nice, modern ring. And if you don’t like that label, you must be a hater.

2011-06-14 09:04 | fche blog seriously Apology to readers

I am at this time prepared to apologize to those readers who misinterpreted my periodic discussions of traffic rules, butter policies, and bird fantasies as subliminally signalling something. I am sorry, I never meant to mislead.

For the record, I am not – I repeat not – a lesbian civil rights activist in Syria. Nor a “40-year old graduate student”, whatever that is.